Physicians and the Nanny State

Now I would be the last to suggest that too much TV and junk food for kids isn’t a problem.   But ultimately, the question is whether it’s a problem that parents ought to be dealing with, or whether it’s one that the state ought to be dealing with.

Pediatricians apparently believe that it’s a “federal issue”:

"It's all just a smokescreen anyway -- the big fast food corporations are basically interested in making money, not making good nutritional products," said Strasburger. "With billions of dollars in profits every year should come a sense of public health responsibility. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to."

McDonald's, which targets kids in much of its advertising, declined to comment.

In the meantime, Strasburger urges families to follow a few simple steps.

"Parents need to listen to the AAP guidelines which say, 'Limit your child to less than two hours of media time per day, keep the TV set and Internet out of the bedroom and avoid screen time in kids under two.'"

But cutting screen time alone isn't enough, according to Strasburger.

"We have to give kids healthy alternatives to being couch potatoes," he said. "The question is, how fat do we want people to become? Congress needs to think about that."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/27/us-doctors-ban-fast-food-ads-on-tv/#ixzz1QTxyd6Gw

I guess I’m getting too close to the end of Atlas Shrugged and have started reading the mindlessness of the masses into everything, but the last line of that article REALLY jumped out at me:  “The question is, how fat do we want people to become? Congress needs to think about that.”  CONGRESS needs to think about it?  Our overlords will now protect us? 

And then that first paragraph quoted—gracious, we’re supposed to believe that fast food restaurants shouldn’t be interested n making money?  And if you make money, you’re obliged to have a sense of “public health responsibility”?  In other words (as in Atlas), I guess you’re supposed give up making money in order to advance the idealistic goals of the overlords.

C’mon folks.  I understand the lure of fast food for kids—I’ve got an 8 year old who would eat every meal at Burger King or McDonalds (if I would let him)—primarily because of the kids’ meals toys, and the advertising of them on some of the channels that I occasionally let him watch (although he’s a bright kid, and can see the pictures as we drive by the restaurants, too—even without TV ads).  But PARENTS need to learn to say “no”, and quit expecting “someone else” to protect their kids.

And then there’s this: I get frustrated with the physicians (like Dr. Strasburger, quoted above), who are so willing to turn their patients’ well-being over the government.  Like the formally esteemed scientists in Atlas, who have become sycophants for the Feds, it seems to me that many of these physicians, well-intentioned though they may be, have contributed to the awful state that we’re in with respect to health care—where the free market is non-existent (except in specialty areas where insurance and the government doesn’t pay anything).

LLE

Comments

[Charlotte Juett]

Laura, parents today are afraid of their kids turning them in as abusers if they don't get their way in everything they want, when they want it. Too many children are instructed in school how to turn in their parents for child abuse and, yes, kids can lie like the dickens. It is too bad they are not also instructed in what happens if they are taken away from their parents due to their lies.

[Laura Ebke]

Well, I don't know how many kids are "instructed in school how to turn in their parents", but it is true, I suppose, that kids can lie like the dickens. And the real problem becomes not so much in kids "turning their parents in", per se, but rather kids saying things that kids say to other kids, or to teachers--and teachers and health care officials are now obligated by law to report anything that could potentially raise a red flag. We walk a fine line on child abuse--no one wants kids in truly abusive homes...then again, some level of common sense needs to be used, i.e., are there other signs of abuse besides the random comments of a kid?